Monday, June 04, 2012

This has been a good fundraiser. In between the circus from Norway and the stories of jihadists, of bankrolled mosques — the usual — readers have been sending feedback. And I'm going to get a tincture for my vertigo, which is better news than an MRI any day. As for the small stack of bills sent in the Anarchist magazine — someone has a fine sense of humor!

The subject of Diversity is fraught. So for this Fundraiser, I’ve deliberately kept the lid on certain subjects. They can accumulate like barnacles or smart bombs on the wall of diversity, or rather on the battlements of modern, top-down “Diversity”. As is true of any other project, some stuff has to be routinely scraped off so you can see what’s underneath, yet other junk — whilst appearing to be identical — will blow up in your face. Frankly, the explosions aren’t interesting anymore.

It is the former which draws my curiosity. .The latter, full of traps like the origins or even the existence of “global” “warming” — oops, climate change…oops, methane in the atmosphere. Whatever. Any point in “discussing” those issues is long past. Those in Charge will tell you ahead of time: “It’s settled…” “Consensus Has Been Reached”… “Everyone Knows”… “Only an Idiot Would Think Such a Thing”….and so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

Have you noticed that the more fervently views on such issues are clung to (bitterly), the less room there is for Reason or even the possibility of entertaining alternate ideas? Entertaining ideas? Enter that realm at your own risk.

Here’s a partial list of Don’t-Go-There-Unless-You-Want-a-Fight hot buttons. No particular order here, simply a reflection of what I’ve been reading and thinking about. These are only contentions; I have no solutions. The mysteries of life usually don't come with quick remedies:

Abortion. Or not. When does life begin to have value? No, it’s not “settled”. Look up the numbers of those who believe religiously in #1 vs. those who think the prize is behind Door #2. Just don’t put these folks in the same room.

Gender. What could be simpler: This is a girl; see that little cleft where her penis should be? This is a boy, see his penis hanging there? Gender-bending is occurring at younger and younger ages, much to the horrified sorrow of parents caught in a five year-old’s intense identity crisis. It may well be that the crisis is real enough, but it could turn out to be just one manifestation of a larger, more complex reality than the one we can see. Human beings are quite malleable, but they are also fragile. The times in which we live, where sexual identity is up for grabs — literally — are reflected in many issues, and one of them is seen in these canary children. In different times most of them would’ve been spared this assault from the zeitgeist, an assault which begins during the dark floaty existence in utero. Were there no assaults from the residues of psychotropic drugs left in the drinking water (just to name one possible influence), or the constant low-level cultural exposure to increasingly depraved pornography, these children could have lived within the boundaries of their respective anatomy without a blip. When times simplify again — and they surely will — outlier cases will recede again. That’s not much comfort now to these kids or their parents as they stumble through the nightmare.

Religion is a crutch vs. Spirituality is a part of human experience. The former has become the more intellectually acceptable attitude of late, though one wonders what insecurity keeps the more aggressively devout unbelievers at their megaphones, proselytizing like hard-shell Mississippi Baptists. You begin to ask if there is some fervent need on their part to save the unwashed from arrant foolishness. Perhaps a good dose of American history about the cycles of the Great Awakenings in the 18th and 19th centuries would at least help the ardent atheists this side of the Atlantic to gain some perspective.

My guess regarding the foundation of this popular orthodoxy among the media gatekeepers? It’s high school redux: they want to be with the cool kids and they don’t want to have to actually study anything. Aping your betters is so much easier, especially if your “educated” betters are being all edgy and you know it will irritate those boring duds in Flyover Country… As is the case for other media belief blankets, if you want to hear another side (and there is more than one) you’ll have to hunt for it on your own. What surprises me is the number of people who do — want to hear another point of view, I mean.

Sex among adults. Interestingly, as the results from the Boomer generation become apparent, and the laws of unintended consequences begin to take their toll, their children are turning away from their parents’ youthful decisions to let it all hang out. They see the results and politely decline. Or at least the ones who catch on early enough do so. They know the health risks for both sexes of too many sexual partners. They understand the complexities of bonding better than their naïve parents did. Except for the one percent — those befuddled “Occupy” useful tools — for the most part middle-class kids have turned back the clock. Of course many of them face rigors their parents did not: huge education debt, a poor job market, and increasing balkanization by class. Their lives will be tougher in many ways, but then so will they. At least the ones who aren’t forced to move back home, much the same way their great grandparents had to do to get by.

Sex with children as the new norm. Nope, that’s not worth our time. The downward deviancy of our culture was seen two generations ago and I’m sure it’s not hit bottom yet. But it will. In the meantime, let’s not contribute to the pollution.

Death. Like the beginnings of life, its endings are becoming more fungible. The Right to Die vs. the Responsibility to Die. Our old are becoming the Ice Floe Generation. And who gets to decide whose life has meaning or value? Recently, a couple sued for Wrongful Birth when their child was born with congenital anomalies the parents believed they should have been told about ahead of time. Among the nettles were questions like financial responsibility for this life no one wants. This question lies floundering side-by-side with the reality of aborted, breathing fetuses who are killed on the operating table without a qualm. Are we confused or what?

Trash. There are lots more thorns and contention here, but let’s end with garbage, with refuse, with detritus. Like global warming, there are folks on both sides of the Religion of Recycling, which is a smaller denomination of the colossal Environmental Cathedral — and that place makes Vatican City look like a high-rise tenement. Again, this subject has sectarian overtones in the higher reaches (or screeches) of the True Believers. For the dissidents there is often no choice: just because you can ‘prove’ your locality saves nothing by recycling doesn’t mean you can opt out. There are handy garbage technologies in your wheelie bin that will see you fined or put in jail if you don’t conform.

One of the dystopian uncharms of living in an urban landscape is unending trash. But city-slicker trash has become another source of revenue for cash-poor rural areas. While the downside is that the nearby urban poor often find it cheaper to skulk out here to the country and leave their bags of unidentifiable refuse because they can’t afford the trash stickers the city makes them buy, there’s an upside to this. Big cities up North will pay good money to poor rural areas if they’ll take the garbage out. Thus many county boards of supervisors do just that, and this venture keeps the real estate tax rate down for the bumpkins.

Don’t you wonder where this will lead as consumers are unable to continue consuming? Will trash reduce itself to an endangered species? In order to continue the justification of its existence, will the EPA have to step in with emergency rulings?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Diverse contentions. They’re endless and they get more polarized all the time. As resources get thin on the ground, look for the rigidities to worsen. I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of living in interesting times. I’m ready for a good long spell of boredom — kind of like those endless amber waves of grain we don’t have anymore because they hybridized all the wheat. Modern varieties are now too short to wave at anyone.

A not-so-modern variety of donors came in yesterday from these places:

hank you all very much for your suggestions and remedies for my latest malheur. I've already started on some of them. The Baron will check in sometime tomorrow with a recap, and then we’re done until next quarter. So much can happen in three months it doesn't bear thinking about it too much. Obama will still be our president, though. Now there is a bone of contention for you; I'm glad I didn't think of it till now.

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Why is the issue of gender normalisation coming up so often. Does it matter what men and women do. Forcing a girl child to affect femininity and a boy child to affect masculinity when neither comes naturally to the child is just as bad as parents forcing them to affect the opposite-sex gender identity. I myself am a good mixture of both masculine and feminine traits (yes I do believe in gender but I think that both biological sexes exhibit traits of both if left to their own devices without judgement - in some theological systems, this is the most desirable state of being). How does one treat an ambiguously sexed child? There are things in this life that need to have some flexibility because nature / creation itself is so varied.

Anon 3:23And why do we need to discuss this to such a degree? 40 years ago humans with a penis were boys and humans with a vagina were girls. How they acted in interactions with others was up for grabs; "tomboys" or "quiet men."

Now, the western world needs to talk about this gender ID with children as young as 5. At age 5 my two children were just realizing that mommy's body was different than daddy's. Never mind delving into the "sexual proclivity" of the 5 year old. I find it totally inappropriate, generally incomprehensible to a 5 year old and, obscene.

Has it occured to you that this intense discussion has promoted the LGBT lifestyle? Men and women that might not normally be part of that lifestyle find a certain attraction to it because it is "cutting edge" and "cool."

Did everyone my age that thought about this lead a miserable life or kill themselves? I don't think so. Medical science was not yet able to accommodate this indulgence. And, society was certainly not willing to fund it.

I was born in 1954 and I didn't know about homosexuality until I was 18. By some miracle... I was able to muddle through without having to ponder these things, as were my friends, until we were adults.

The whole discussion of "let's delve into what gender you REALLY are" has been manufactured by adults with nothing better to think about to the detriment of children. Children have a whole lot of things way more important to think about. It is the adults that drive this sick discussion.

I do believe that western society is so bored that they have manufactured this controversy much to our detriment.

Is it a girl that likes to play baseball, or a boy that likes to sit under a tree and read?

This is what I was trying to get at in my last comment. How does an adult decide that a CHILD is "ambiguously sexed?"

I was a member of a babysitting co-op for 6 years. As sure as night follows day some of the boys would leave my home with cuts and bruises every time while others just liked to curl up with Teddy Ruxpin for the duration.

Some of the girls would leave my home with their darling tights with pink roses on them trashed while others spent the entire time coloring pictures for Mommy.

I never once pondered their "gender identity."

The ones with penises were boys and the ones with vaginas were girls. They were all different, every one of them but, I never thought any further about it.

And guess what, I think they made out just fine without any further evaluation by bored adults.

Having now commented on this twice I think the readers probably realize that this hits a nerve with me.

Must we really rob our children of their childhood, distract them from the very important tasks they have of learning the basic elements of their world, and confuse them with concepts that they are no where ready to assimilate?

This is all for the benefit of adults that haven't a clue how to parent and are unable to teach their children the basic tenets of the world around them. Rather, they fall back on sick concepts that the parents themselves wish to work out about themselves.

9/11 is off the contentions list, as almost everyone in the reading the free press now has grasp the fact that the elite pulled on over on us with that to give us the War on Terror

One of the advantages to the elite for high levels of Muslim immigration is that it increases the number of potential terrorist in the West, and thus helps to justify the endless imposition of ever tighter security screening and checkpoints.

Babs. Regarding my comment "How does one treat an ambiguously sexed child". I wasn't talking about the psychosocial gender aspect, I was talking about the biological sex of hermaphrodite - those children born with some aspects of both genitalia. How can we decide whether they are in fact boys or girls then? Our obsession with classifying people as either male or female can have some very detrimental affects on the poor child. Why not allow them to be "third sex" until they are old enough to decide which of the three sexes they would like to be? Why can't human society accept that we don't all fit into neat boxes?